March 1
NEW YORK:
He Killed 140 Men in the Electric Chair. Then He Took His Own Life.The man who
operated New York State's "Old Sparky" was calm, collected and always
professional. No one knew that every flick of the switch was tearing him apart.
It's 11 p.m. on Thursday, September 17, 1925 - "Black Thursday" to the
residents of Sing Sing prison in New York???s Hudson Valley. The inmates are
locked down for the night, unable to leave their cells. All except one.
Prisoner Julius Miller, with 4 guards as well as the chaplain in tow, just
walked 20 paces from the pre-execution waiting cells, called the "Dance Hall,"
to the legendary "Death House." He's standing next to the electric chair
inmates long ago nicknamed "Old Sparky."
The warden asks him for any last words. He has none.
The guards quickly seat him, buckling black leather straps round his limbs and
torso.
The "State Electrician," John Hurlburt, a grim-faced man in his late fifties,
of average height and wearing a dark suit and spotless black shoes, steps
forward. His job has all but destroyed him. But Hurlburt's disposition betrays
nothing as he carefully checks the electrode strapped to Miller's right leg.
The electrode is in working order, and the sponge it contains is soaked in
brine, just as it should be.
Hurlburt is calm, impassive, and entirely professional. But he's gritting his
teeth and a thin sheen of sweat adorns his stern face. He doesn't want to do
this, to keep on doing it. But he has no alternative. He also doesn't know that
this, his 140th execution, will be his last.
Hurlburt slides a leather helmet over Miller's carefully-shaven head. It
contains another electrode and another sponge. He connects a cable, ensures the
wingnut is finger-tight, that the electrode is flush against the skin. He wraps
a black leather mask round the prisoner's face and pulls it tight, buckling it
round the back of the chair.
Miller's eyes are now obscured, but Hurlburt, slowly coming apart, makes a
point of never looking a prisoner in the eyes. It's hard enough to throw the
switch, harder still if he accepts in the slightest that he's about to kill in
cold blood. All Hurlburt chooses to consider are the technical aspects,
reflecting a deep desire to get it over with, collect his check, and go home.
With that, he takes a few steps to the alcove where the switchboard waits. All
that remains is for the warden to give the signal.
He does so immediately, and Hurlburt jerks the lever. A dynamo hums, the sound
rising and filling the silent room. Miller jerks forward and up, strains
against the straps. Hurlburt watches and works the dials, bringing the voltage
up, down, then up again. The prisoner spasms as the voltage rises and falls.
Tendrils of smoke rise from his head and leg. Hurlburt cuts the power and the
doctor steps forward, stethoscope in hand.
"I pronounce this man dead," he says flatly.
A scent of burned flesh hangs in the air amid a deafening silence.
Justice has been served.
Or perhaps not. Sing Sing Warden Lewis E. Lawes, who supervised Miller's
electrocution, when asked if execution was really any better than murder,
responded scornfully with: "As if one crime of such nature, done by a single
man, acting individually, can be expiated by a similar crime done by all men,
acting collectively."
From dime novels to Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy to movies like
"Angels with Dirty Faces" and "The Green Mile," "Old Sparky" has provided the
denouement in countless, beloved American stories. "In the hot seat," a phrase
derived from the notion of death by the electric chair, now describes
unpleasant personal or professional predicaments. Old blues standards
name-check "the chair," the final destination for many an African-Americans
through history.
Capital punishment has destroyed prison staff and executioners as well. They've
suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, and depression.
John Hurlburt, the 2nd of New York's 5 "State Electricians" through history,
was one of them.
Born in Auburn, New York in September 1867, Hurlburt was initially hired as an
electrician at Auburn Prison - the 1st prison to host an execution by way of
electrocution, that of William Kemmler on August 6, 1890. It was botched so
horrendously that George Westinghouse, a pioneer of the electrical industry and
Thomas Edison rival, remarked: "They would have done better with an axe."
Kemmler's inhumane death did not deter New York and other states from carrying
out more executions via the electric chair. To date over 4,300 people - 695 of
those in New York - have walked their "last mile" to "ride the lightning."
While executing 140 of Sing Sing's 614 "thunderbolt jockeys," Hurlburt was,
emotionally, slowly deteriorating.
At Auburn Prison, Hurlburt met Edwin Davis, the world's 1st "electrocutioner."
Like Hurlburt, Davis was a dour, quiet, and taciturn man. Enormously secretive
about his work, Davis executed 240 inmates between 1890 and 1914. Though Davis
himself claimed to have no faith in the death penalty, before retiring he
trained 2 assistants: Hurlburt and Robert Greene Elliott. Both assisted at
executions, themselves performing several under Davis's supervision.
Despite this, it was Davis who conducted the busiest Black Thursday in Sing
Sing's history when, on August 12, 1912, he electrocuted s7 men consecutively,
a single-day's state record. Those of the 7 waiting to die wreaked havoc in
their cells as they saw the others led away, one by one. The horror lingered
long in the mind of Sing Sing doctor Amos Squire, who described it thus:
"All of us in the execution chamber - witnesses and officials - could hear
them, as could those of the 7 who went 1st. The shrieking and wailing I heard
that day is indescribable. The whole thing was like a nightmare, unreal and yet
horrible."
Hurlburt took Davis's place and Elliott replaced Hurlburt. The State of New
York, meanwhile, reduced the number of electric chairs, if not the usage.
Originally using 3, those at the Auburn and Dannemora correctional facilities
were discarded. By 1915, Sing Sing had a custom-built, maximum-security
facility solely used to confine and execute New York's condemned. Officially
named the "Condemned Cells" this facility earned world-wide infamy as the
"Death House." Sing Sing's inmates called it something else: "The Slaughter
House."
Hurlburt's 1st official engagement saw him take on double duty - executions of
George Coyer and Guiseppe DeGoia at Auburn prison on August 31, 1914. Hurlburt
drew $150 for a single job, with an extra 50 per head for the 2nd inmate
onward. Twice he executed 5, earning himself $400 for the night's work.
His wife Mattie was chronically ill. Medical bills piled up, so, long after
Hurlburt began to abhor the job, it was executions that paid them off. The
stress simply never ceased.
He tried desperately to remain anonymous, never discussing executions with
family or friends. The press constantly tried to sneak a photograph, though
they were never successful. Hurlburt had demanded his name be kept secret, but
that only encouraged reporters, and it wasn't long before his name made the
papers.
High profile executions made secrecy even harder and there were plenty of
those. Notorious inmates attracted big press interest. Hurlburt executed New
York's notorious killer cop Charles Becker and the 4 hitmen Becker hired to
kill gambler Herman "Beansie" Rosenthal. He threw the switch on "Playboy
Poisoner" Arthur Warren Waite. When Hans Schmidt became America's only Catholic
priest executed for murder, Hurlburt executed him. The "Paper Box Kid," Oreste
Shillitoni, the only successful escapee from Sing Sing's legendary Death House,
died at Hurlburt's hand when recaptured.
The greater the interest, the harder it became for Hurlburt to remain
anonymous, and like Davis before him, he feared vengeance. The more executions
he performed, the more enemies he figured he had.
Worse still were botched executions. Very few executioners go their entire
career without mistakes and Hurlburt's was not one of them. Charles Becker
convulsed so violently he popped the restraining chest strap and needed 3 jolts
before dying. Thomas Tarpey, the 2nd of the 5 Hurlburt executed on September 3,
1915, needed 5 jolts.
An illustration that appeared in the June 1888 issue of the magazine,
Scientific American, announcing the electric chair as a new form of
execution.An illustration that appeared in the June 1888 issue of the magazine,
Scientific American, announcing the electric chair as a new form of execution.
Then, there were the surreal executions. When Hurlburt executed Leo Jankowski
and Walter Levandowski in 1920, Jankowski, in constant misery, stood beside the
chair sobbing with relief that his life would soon be over. Another inmate made
a curious last request, wishing to perform his final walk on his hands.
Hurlburt's 1st sight of him came as he entered the execution chamber
upside-down.
But the bills kept coming. So did executions in New York, New Jersey,
Massachusetts and further afield. Hurlburt conducted Nebraska's 1st when Alson
Cole and Allen Grammer "burned" in 1920. So too, almost, did Hurlburt. He fled
a party of outraged death penalty opponents threatening to lynch him.
Hurlburt's temperament increasingly worsened. Prison staff reported regular
yelling and the throwing of equipment around the death chamber before
executions.
Hours before a triple execution on April 30, 1925 Hurlburt finally collapsed.
Recovering enough to throw the switch, he spent a week in Sing Sing's hospital.
After 2 more executions - of John Durkin and Julius Miller - he suddenly
resigned on January 16, 1926. (Prisoners John Slattery and Ambrose Ross were
delighted. Scheduled for execution on January 20, their sentences were later
commuted, thanks in part to the delay.)
When asked about his sudden resignation, Hurlburt said, "I got tired of killing
people."
Emil Klatt and Luigi Rapito weren't. By January 29 New York had appointed
Davis's other apprentice Robert Elliott. State law required executioners be
qualified electricians of good character and preferably experienced. From over
150 applicants Elliott was the only option. With Elliott appointed, Klatt and
Rapito were doomed. Serving until 1939, Elliott had notched numbers 1 and 2 of
his eventual 387. Despite having been co-workers, Elliott was critical of
Hurlburt, ascribing problematic executions like Tarpey and Becker to Hurlburt's
alleged lack of technique.
As Elliott became New York's best-known, most prolific executioner, Hurlburt's
decline only accelerated. His wife Mattie died in September 1925. On February
22, 1929, grief-stricken and haunted, Hurlburt entered the basement of his
Auburn home. In his hand was the revolver he'd carried while Auburn Prison's
ordinary electrician 2 decades earlier. His body was discovered by his son
Clarence. The official cause of death was suicide.
Dr. Squire had endured 138 executions. He also resigned, stating: "The horror
of that one duty grew on me until I could no longer bear it."
Prison Chaplain Father Cashin abruptly departed to an ordinary parish, his
reasons officially "unspecified." Principal Keeper Fred Dorner - leader of the
execution team - also suffered a nervous breakdown.
Hurlburt was dead, but "Old Sparky" wasn't. Thousands more "fried" before the
gas chamber, then lethal injection, rendered it obsolete. Sing Sing's last
electrocution, of murderer Eddie Lee Mays, was in August 1963. The former Death
House is now a vocational center where inmates learn a trade before parole,
scratching days off their calendars more hopefully than their predecessors. The
chair is now an exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.
(source: Robert Walsh is a freelance writer based in the UK specializing in
military history and true crime. He regularly contributes to Real Crime
Magazine and has been an expert consultant on crime for the BBC----Narratively)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Lawyers argue for and against death penalty for Wake County murderer
The trial of a Wake County man who murdered his in-laws and shot his estranged
wife in the face and chest entered the death penalty phase Tuesday.
The prosecution and defense made opening statements before the prosecution
began presenting witnesses.
Nathan Holden killed 57-year-old Angelia Smith Taylor and 66-year-old Sylvester
Taylor near Wendell in April 2014.
He also shot his estranged wife LaTonya Allen as the couple's 3 children were
huddled in a nearby closet listening.
The jury in the case found him guilty of 1st-degree murder and other charges
Monday.
Prosecutors say Allen had filed for a restraining order and was working towards
getting a divorce, but Holden refused to accept that the marriage was about to
end. The couple separated back in December 2013.
"It's about hate. It's about selfishness. It's about hating someone that took
something from you," said Prosecutor Jason Waller in his closing argument
before the guilty verdict.
Defense attorney Jonathan Broun told jurors in his opening statement for the
death penalty phase that Holden suffered a difficult childhood, and that his
mother suffered with substance abuse and domestic violence.
He argued that his client does not deserve to be sent to death row.
"Nate Holden is a lot more than what happened that night," he said.
(source: ABC news)
TENNESSEE:
Proposed legislation aims to expedite death row cases in Tennessee
The Chief Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court visited in Kingsport Tuesday,
and we asked him about Tennessee's death penalty.
Chief Justice Jeff Bivins is a Kingsport native and an East Tennessee State
University graduate.
We wanted to find out about death penalty cases, because they are notorious for
lingering in Tennessee.
There is proposed legislation that would take death penalty appeals directly to
the Supreme Court, bypassing the court of appeals.
I wanted to find out if Chief Justice Jeff Bivins thinks this would expedite
cases of death row inmates.
Right now, the Tennessee Department of Corrections lists more than 60 inmates
on death row in the state.
16 of those were convicted in East Tennessee.
The last execution was in 2009.
Chief Justice Bivins says an average death row inmate has been there for more
than 20 years.
A spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Corrections says it costs nearly
$110 a day to keep an offender on death row.
"It is a very high cost. But it's something that the people of Tennessee
decided that through the members of the legislation that they do want to
maintain the death penalty," Bivins said.
The long length of these cases is a reason new legislation is proposed to have
direct death row appeals go straight to the Supreme Court.
It would not involve post conviction appeals.
Bivins tells us there are pros and cons to this legislation.
"It would probably speed up the process by 6 months or so. But it also is
helpful to have the court of criminal appeals review it because they are able
to narrow down the issues and it's another set of eyes on that," he said.
He also says the supreme court has only had 5 of those cases over the last 5
years.
"It's not that big of a case load for us," he said.
While the court's goal is to be efficient, Bivins says they can't work too
fast, that they overlook something.
"It's an incredibly important decision. It's a critical decision. It's a life
or death decision, literally."
Chief Justice Bivins tells us a case pending in court now might help free up
some death row cases so they can be set for execution.
It's a challenge to the lethal injection protocol.
Right now, Tennessee uses a single drug protocol, as a way to be more efficient
and humane.
Bivins says a decision will come down in about a month.
If the decision upholds the protocol, he says it would free up a number of
cases so they can be set for execution.
(source: Jessica Griffith, WCYB news)
ILLINOIS:
Former Death Row Inmate Awarded $22 Million For Wrongful Conviction
A former gang member who was wrongfully convicted for murder and sentenced to
serve 12 years on death row, has now been awarded $22 million.
In a report from NBC Chicago, a 12-member federal jury this past Thursday
decided that the city of Chicago, as well as current and former police
officers, were liable for more than $22 million in damages in the wrongful
conviction of former gang member Nathson Fields.
Fields' suit included 38 defendants that listed the city; former Mayor Richard
Daley; Chicago Police officers; and former and current Cook County prosecutors.
He was awarded $22 million in compensatory damages and $40,000 in punitive
damages.
The suit goes all the way back to 1984 when Fields was falsely arrested,
indicted and convicted for the murders of 2 people on the city's South Side.
Fields first filed a lawsuit back in 1988, but it wasn't until 2011 that he was
given access to files that were pertinent to his lawsuit win.
Those files were a part of what the Chicago Police Department and city refer to
as "street files," which were withheld from Fields.
"The city of Chicago was independently liable here because they maintained a
street file practice all through the '80s and continuing through the '90s and
even into the 2000s," Jon Loevy, Fields' attorney, said. "They have a practice
at the city where they withhold exculpatory evidence in a parallel set of files
and we presented that evidence to the jury."
Most of the evidence from Fields' trial was taken from this street file, with
400 to 1,000 files used to support Fields' suit.
Fields met with an executioner more than once during his time on death row, and
was supposed to have gotten the death penalty. But his case, as well as the
city withholding files beneficial to it, speaks to other people in prison who
are possibly being affected by the same practice.
(source: okayplayer.com)
MISSOURI:
Judge: State knowingly broke Sunshine Law on execution drug
A Missouri judge ruled the state Corrections Department intentionally delayed
fulfilling a Sunshine request over the source of execution drugs to avoid
returning them and facing negative publicity.
"The Missouri Department of Corrections violated the public's trust, in both
its plan to use questionably obtained drugs and by purposefully violating the
Sunshine Law to cover up its scheme," American Civil Liberties Union of
Missouri Executive Director Jeffrey Mittman said in a Monday statement touting
the ruling.
The attorney general's office did not immediately comment Monday. At issue is a
2013 open records request from the ACLU over where the state got the anesthetic
drug propofol to use in executions. Most of the propofol used in the United
States had been made in Europe, where the anti-death penalty European Union was
considering export limits over its use in lethal injections.
The ACLU request sought to determine how the state was able to obtain the drug
when all the leading makers, who had opposed its use in executions, were
refusing to sell it to prisons or corrections departments, according to the
lawsuit.
The Missouri Corrections Department told the ACLU it would take about 3 weeks
to provide the information but didn't respond by then. The state fulfilled the
request after the ACLU sued. Later in 2013, Missouri switched to using the drug
pentobarbital for lethal injections after doctor protests and an intervention
by then-Gov. Jay Nixon to halt executions using propofol.
Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce in her Friday ruling said the state
delayed giving the information to avoid "having to return the drugs, rewrite
its execution protocol, and cancel an execution, as well as receive negative
publicity." She ordered the state to pay a $2,500 penalty and the ACLU's
attorney fees.
(source: Associated Press)
COLORADO:
Boulder DA weighing death penalty in Ashley Mead death and dismemberment case
---- DA Stan Garnett, an outspoken death penalty critic, hasn't had a chance to
talk yet with the victim's family
Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett, an outspoken critic of the death
penalty, says he's weighing whether to pursue capital punishment in the death
and dismemberment case of Ashley Mead.
"I do strongly oppose the death penalty, but with regards to any individual
case I have an obligation as a prosecutor and under the victim right's act to
discuss it with the victim's family in the case," Garnett said.
Garnett said he has not had a chance to discuss the matter with Mead's family,
and so he has not yet made a decision about whether to pursue the death penalty
against Adam Densmore, who was charged Tuesday with 1st-degree murder and
tampering with a deceased human body. Densmore also was charged with tampering
with evidence and abuse of a corpse in connection with the death of Mead, who
was the mother of his infant daughter.
Mead, 25, was reported missing Feb. 14 along with 1-year-old Winter Daisy Mead.
The day after she was reported missing, partial human remains were discovered
in Okmulgee, Okla., and later were identified as Mead's. Police believe the
rest of her remains may be in a purple suitcase discarded somewhere between
Louisiana and Oklahoma.The baby was found safe in Oklahoma with Densmore. She
is now in foster care.
The day after she was reported missing, partial human remains were discovered
in Okmulgee, Okla., and later were identified as Mead's.
Police believe the rest of Mead's remains may be in a purple suitcase discarded
somewhere between Louisiana and Oklahoma.
It's believed Mead was killed in Boulder and dismembered in Louisiana, where
police found another crime scene.
Densmore was located and apprehended Feb. 16 with their daughter outside of
Tulsa, Okla. The 1-year-old was unharmed, and is now in foster care.
Police said Densmore left Boulder on Feb. 13 and drove to Raton, N.M., and
through the Texas panhandle before arriving in Haughton, La., on Feb. 14.
Police said he then drove through Conway, Ark., and Okmulgee before being
arrested outside Tulsa, about 40 miles from where the first remains were found.
While police have not commented on a possible motive, 1 of Mead's friends told
the Daily Camera that their relationship was tumultuous and that Mead recently
had begun dating another man.
Mead and Densmore were raising their daughter together, but were no longer
romantically involved, friends said.
Densmore originally was arrested on an additional charge of violating a custody
agreement, but Garnett indicated that count won't be filed.
"My office carefully reviews the evidence that is available before making the
decision about filing of charges," Garnett said at a news conference in which
he also thanked the various law enforcement agencies in Colorado, Louisiana and
Oklahoma that aided in the investigation.
"I do really think the public should know that this case and the investigation
in this case was a terrific example of investigative work," Garnett said.
The arrest affidavit in the case has been sealed.
Assistant District Attorney Katharina Booth told Boulder District Judge Ingrid
Bakke at Tuesday's hearing that the prosecution no longer needed the warrants
in the case sealed, but defense attorney Kathryn Herold asked that Bakke keep
the files out of the public eye.
Bakke asked both Booth and Herold to submit motions on the matter by Friday.
(source: Daily Camera)
CALIFORNIA----death row inmate dies
California killer Stevie Lamar Fields dies on death row
Condemned killer Stevie Lamar Fields, 60, was pronounced dead Tuesday on San
Quentin State Prison's death row, the California Department of Corrections
reported.
The cause of death is unknown, and an autopsy will be conducted, the agency's
press release said. Fields was found unresponsive in his cell at 5:38 a.m.
Tuesday. He did not have a cellmate.
In 1984, Fields had come within 42 hours of execution before the state Supreme
Court approved a stay.
Fields had been on death row since 1979, convicted of the kidnapping, rape and
killing the previous year of Rosemary Cobb, a 26-year-old student librarian at
the University of Southern California.
He also was convicted of 12 other felonies, including 2 rapes and 3 kidnappings
that occurred in an 8-day period after the murder.
The Los Angeles spree took place 2 weeks after he was paroled from a
manslaughter sentence.
The California Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and death sentence in
December 1983. A year later, less than 2 days before his scheduled execution,
he received a stay to give his lawyers a chance to work on new arguments in the
case.
His lawyers filed several appeals in the following decades in attempts to
overturn his death penalty. Among the claims were:
-- Failure of his lawyer to investigate potential evidence concerning
psychological damage caused by Fields' cruel childhood.
-- Bias by a juror whose wife had been a crime victim.
-- Improper injection of religion into the proceedings by a juror who cited
biblical quotations during the penalty phase.
In the last action on his case, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 let stand
without comment a federal appeals court's reinstating of Fields' death penalty.
(source: Mercury News)
USA:
On death row, art is a way to win hearts and minds
Tyrone Chalmers started drawing at age 8. "Art shadows me everywhere I go in
life ... my best work comes from within my dreams."
Chalmers is a passionate and committed artist. He is also a convicted murderer
on death row. In handwritten letters to Guardian Australia sent from Unit 2 at
Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, he and fellow
inmates describe what art means to them.
For Harold Nichols, who received a death sentence for the rape and murder of a
21-year-old woman in 1988, it's all about the act of creation. "When I start
with a blank paper or canvas and begin to make lines and marks and see these
congeal into a reasonable form, this is the true moment when I have created
something from nothing."
For GDongalay Berry, art is "sadistic, it's masochistic, passive, aggressive,
good, evil, vanilla, erotic, it's God, it's Satanic ... all things in what we
humans call life." Berry was convicted of the 1995 murder of a 12-year-old girl
and a 1996 double homicide. The 1995 murder conviction was later overturned.
From expressing spirituality and identity to creating a meditative focus, art
takes on a heightened value inside prison.
For inmates such as Donald Middlebrooks, it also provides therapy and a form of
penance. He was convicted of the torture and murder of a 14-year-old boy. Art,
says Middlebrooks, "is the way I express my pain from childhood abuse ... [it]
allows me to escape."
Chalmers is a passionate and committed artist. He is also a convicted murderer
on death row. He and fellow inmates describe what art means to them.
Their studio? A large cinder block prison building where, every Thursday night,
they gather around 2 large tables.
Since 2013, they???ve been taught by Robin Paris and her colleague Tom
Williams, professors of art at Watkins College of Art, Design and Film in
Nashville. Over that time, their work has been shown in five art exhibitions in
Tennessee and one at the Apexart Gallery in New York.
This work of art was created by death row prisoner Harold Nichols and Holly
Cardin, a student at Watkins College of Art. They worked equally with the
image; it went back and forth in and out of the prison for weeks.
For that show, Life After Death and Elsewhere, poignantly, they created their
own memorials: a rose, a spiral of books, a diorama of feathers and animal
figures, an aeroplane with a painted skull, a ceramic tree.
What is death row like? Peaceful, says Williams: "Despite stories about death
row being filled with 'the worst of the worst', these men get along with each
other, and it's easily one of the safest units in the prison." Paris says a
group of 6 men have formed the core for the past t3 years although "there have
been as many as 15; some have dropped out and 2 have died [of natural causes]."
In the U.S., art has become a new weapon in the battle for hearts and minds
over the justness of the death penalty - an increasingly heated and polarizing
issue touching on not just the ethics and morality of state-sponsored killing
but prison reform, class and the inequities of the justice system.
Close to 3,000 inmates are currently on death row while controversy rages
following a series of recent botched lethal injection executions, DNA-based
exonerations of death row inmates and growing concern over racial
discrimination in the criminal justice system.
Through art, a coalition of artists, educators and activists hope to humanize
the plight of prisoners and sway public opinion. Organizations include REACH
which provides workshops to Tennessee death row inmates, Minutes Before Six
(MB6), a blog by death row inmates dedicated to using arts and literature as a
form of rehabilitation, and Art For Justice.
Through art, a coalition of artists, educators and activists hope to humanize
the plight of prisoners and sway public opinion.
In some cases, the human body itself has become a political tool in this
debate. In a macabre twist, Texas death row inmate Travis Runnels has given his
consent for his body post-execution to be donated to Danish activist Martin
Martensen-Larsen to be painted gold and preserved as part of an installation.
In 2012, the ashes of another executed convicted murderer from Texas, Karl
Eugene Chamberlain, were exhibited as part of an installation by
Martensen-Larsen in a Danish church.
Windows on Death Row, a travelling exhibition of over 60 works from death row
inmates and some of America's most famous political cartoonists, is currently
on show at Ohio State University, while London-based artist Nicola White,
founder of ArtReach: Reaching out with Art from Death Row - a project featuring
a website of art by San Quentin inmates for sale, with proceeds used for
victims of violent crimes and to buy art supplies - plans four new shows of
prisoners' work this year in London. Her Twitter feed @DeathRowArtists provides
a lively commentary on the art of San Quentin prisoners.
And in Sydney, a show of over 100 paintings by executed Bali 9 member Myuran
Sukumaran, Another Day in Paradise, has just opened at Campbelltown Arts
Centre, organized by artist and co-curator Ben Quilty, who was Sukumaran's
mentor and teacher until Sukumaran was executed in 2015.
Why have these artists and educators become involved? For Williams, formerly a
death penalty supporter, it is to provide a voice for the voiceless. He adds:
"If we're going to kill these men, then we should be willing to listen to what
they have to say."
For White, who has worked with more than 25 San Quentin inmates since 2015, art
and self-expression is a basic human right that provides dignity to the
condemned. These men are human - often showing "extraordinary talent" - not
monsters, she says. Art can act as a powerful political weapon by putting a
face and story to these lives.
Why have these artists and educators become involved? For Williams, it is to
provide a voice for the voiceless. For White, art and self-expression is a
basic human right that provides dignity to the condemned.
White quoted Sister Helen Prejean, a Louisiana-based campaigner for death row
prisoners and the families of murder victims, and an advocate for the abolition
of the death penalty. "When she met a death row prisoner she had been writing
to for the first time, [she] said, 'When I saw his face, it was so human, it
blew me away. I got a realization then, no matter what he had done ... he is
worth more than the worst thing he ever did.'"
For many, art has provided a form of personal rehabilitation. Quilty points to
Sukumaran, and his journey from drug-runner to sensitive and self-knowing
artist. White cites former Crips gang member Steve Champion, who has been on
death row since 1982, age 18; he is now a self-educated author.
Why should these men - convicted of the worst crimes - be provided a public
platform for creativity? What of their victims, and their victims' families,
and their rights in this?
In some cases, Robin Paris explains, their guilt itself is in question; she
cites a spate of recent death row exonerations - including that of Ndume
Olatushani, "a man who was on death row for 22 years, was exonerated, and says
that painting and art literally saved his life. He now leads a full and
powerful life outside of prison."
But even for those whose guilt is beyond question, their advocates believe it
is important to highlight the issue of how race and class twist legal outcomes:
Those on death row are overwhelmingly poor and of minority background. As Paris
says, "There are no rich people, to my knowledge, on death row."
A majority of death row inmates also come from backgrounds of terrible
childhood abuse and deprivation. What would their lives have been like if they
had been offered the chance to be creative, to express themselves through art,
to have an education, asks Quilty, who believes art therapy should have a much
bigger role in the "dehumanizing" Australian prison system.
For many, art has provided a form of personal rehabilitation.
"We have seen these changes in them," says Paris. "The question I keep asking
is why can't that happen earlier, in school, in our communities? The meaning
and insight these men have made come with the opportunities that a good,
working social and educational system would provide. It wasn't there for them."
Quilty hopes the show will help change minds about the death penalty. "Myuran
was very aware that there was an end point to his creative output and that end
point is a profound metaphor for how stupid and violent and evil execution is."
(source: Sharon Verghis is an Australian journalist; sfbayview.com)
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A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu
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